Another time, Mama had managed to get one set of papers signed. Then she was told to go to another building to get a second set stamped. I went with her again. This time the queue was shorter. We were in the final queue before lunchtime. Our spirits were high and I remember Mama even smiling as she handed over the required documentation. This was it. We would be a step closer to leaving the country.

But when she handed over the paperwork, instead of simply stamping it and sending us away, the man behind the desk shook his head. ‘You have done this wrong,’ he said. ‘You are meant to get it stamped first. Then you get the other section signed. I cannot accept this.’ He ripped the papers up in front of our eyes. ‘Start again,’ he said as he casually dropped them into the bin beside him.

‘I can’t go through it again,’ Mama said to me now. It was more than four months since Papa had been taken away and we were no closer to leaving Vienna than we’d been that day. ‘What’s the point?’

‘Mama, we can’t give up,’ I tried to argue. It wasn’t even about following Papa’s urgent plea for us to leave any more. We knew even without him here that he was right; we had to go. Every day told us that Austria was no longer a country for us. The daily taunts, the restrictions on our movement, the curfews – it was no way to live, and Mama knew it as well as I did.

‘I can’t do it,’ Mama said. ‘They act like cats toying with a helpless mouse for their own entertainment. I won’t put myself in that position again. I refuse to give them the satisfaction. And anyway, even if we manage to get these documents signed, we still don’t have all we need, and we never will.’

‘Why is that, Mama?’

‘Because it is not enough for them that we leave everything behind – our home, our possessions, my husband! We have to have a sponsor in a country we want to go to. Someone to vouch for us, give us a home, a job, assure the Nazis that they are rid of us for good.’ She looked at me, her eyes dark and heavy-lidded. ‘Leo, my darling,’ she said softly. ‘We don’t know anyone in another country. There is nobody waiting to help us.’

‘But Mama, we have to keep trying,’ I insisted.

She softly put her finger over my lips. ‘I’m finished,’ she said. ‘No more. We will brave things out and your father will soon be home, and then we will all be together and get through this as a family. It can’t get any worse than it is now. Just hold tight and we will get through it.’

‘Okay, Mama,’ I said with a deep sigh. What choice did I have?